


Spinning, Slipping Out of Time

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: Ave Maria [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Maria Stark feels, POV Maria Stark, The Stark family has issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:24:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Marrying each other was more of a surrender; an end, rather than a beginning.  "</p><p>Can be read as a prologue or as a coda to the 'Ave Maria' series</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spinning, Slipping Out of Time

The tabloids always loved to speculate on what must have been Maria's first words upon meeting Howard Stark.

The trash-magazine-reading public did not generally consider “That’s not as impressive as you think it is; unless that car can fly.” Apparently shoving a man aside and popping open the hood to his favorite convertible was not quite romantic enough for a classic meet-cute.

Then again, the Starks had never really been young lovers. She hadn’t waited for his war to end (a good thing, as it never really did). He hadn’t tried to understand the depth of hers (a bad thing, as it crept under her sternum and poisoned her heart and his in the end).  They were academic rivals first, a relationship and a connection so jarring, unexpected and unwanted that both chafed and strained under its load.  Then they were comrades sidelined by a war they were supposed to engineer a way out of.  Then they were friends, then enemies, and then friends again, always dragged into each other’s orbit for better or worse because there really wasn’t anyone else who _understood._ They were both supposed to be prodigies but in the end it was always Howard, Howard, HOWARD, a name pounding its way through business, through history, through the brain of the woman who was his equal in everything and nothing. 

Marrying each other was more of a surrender; an end, rather than a beginning. 

Maria had said it best, in the midst of a fight, bitter cruel and cold and bruisingly familiar, “Who will they remember, Howard? When they page through the history books, when they look at that logo, when they stand on our graves, when they _see my son_? You! It was always you and it will always be _you_ , goddammit!”

When Tony Stark was an orphan, an adult and finally, alone, he created the Maria Stark Foundation and privately, quietly, wished he could have christened it the Maria Carbonell Foundation.  But that would have stirred up a media frenzy of the wrong sort, so in the end his mother’s memory was still shackled to his father’s name. But at least her ghost had something completely her own. 

_“Who will they remember, Howard?”_

**Author's Note:**

> It has always seemed genuinely tragic to me how often the mothers and wives of historical and public figures are frequently sidelined in the memories of the public. Maria Stark barely gets a mention in MCU, leaving her character a near-blank slate. I freely admit that I have zero knowledge of comic canon Maria Stark. This fic and it's series is just meant to be an exploration of a person her character might have been.
> 
> The title is a taken from a line in Florence + Machine's song 'Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)'


End file.
